Trump health care plan likely good for pharmaceutical companies

Pharmaceutical companies appear to be hopeful about their growth under a Trump administration, after former President Joe Biden took a hardline stance on the industry for the last four years. 

Like his predecessor, President Donald Trump will make lowering health-care costs for Americans a priority. It’s a popular bipartisan issue in a nation where patients pay two-to-three times more for prescription drugs than people in other developed countries. Trump has not yet outlined specific health policy plans, but his new administration will likely take a different, more pro-business approach than Biden’s did. 

Drugmakers hope Trump will focus more on cracking down on middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers, while taking heat off the prices the pharma companies themselves charge, promoting drug innovation and improving patient access to treatments. Those companies are particularly eager to see changes to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which includes landmark provisions that aim to make medicines more affordable — but that the industry views as a threat to innovation and its profits. 

That was the sentiment during the JPMorgan Health Care Conference in San Francisco this month, the largest gathering in the U.S. of pharma and biotech executives and investors. The annual conference gives a pulse on the industry’s outlook for the year ahead. To no surprise, health policy questions dominated many of the conversations as Trump was heading into office.

Trump isn’t exactly a friendly face to the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, as he targeted companies and high drug costs during his first term through proposals like linking government payments for medicines to lower prices paid abroad. Still, executives stressed they are ready to work with Trump, who some described as being willing to hear out their grievances. 

“There are several people that think for our industry, the risks outweigh the opportunities. There are other people, among them myself, which they think that the opportunities outweigh the risks. I guess we’ll see,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said during a presentation at the conference. 

“What we do as an industry, and as Pfizer, is engage with the new administration,” he later added. “We have very productive engagements and we try to explain the positions, I think that are well-understood.” 

Still, some executives acknowledged uncertainties around the new administration, such as the anti-vaccine views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Health experts have said that Kennedy, if confirmed by the Senate, may not do much to stop vaccine approvals, but could deter more Americans from taking recommended shots.  

“I think he represents the caution when it comes to the Trump administration,” BMO…